As far as I'm concerned, how often you wash your pajamas comes under the heading of "too much information," a category that includes such individual preferences as:

How many times can you use the same bath towel?

Is there any place you feel you cannot floss?

What are your options when you run out of clean underwear?

But back to your PJs.

Experts say you should wash pajamas once a week to avoid such icky things as infections and cystitis, which they say can occur if skin cells and bacteria find their way into your body via cuts or, um, your private entrances and exits.

According to a recent poll, the average male washes his pajamas about every two weeks.

This is very surprising. I'd have guess only the most prissy of men — think George Will types — washed their pajamas so often.

Even more surprising is the rate at which women launder their night wear. Now, you might think women would be much more conscientious then men in this regard. Well, you would be wrong.

On average, women wash their pajamas every 17 days. That's right. Men wash their pajamas more often that women.

Before heralding this revelation as some kind of cataclysmic cultural shift in gender hygiene, it must be noted that women have an excuse. They claim the reason they only wash their pajamas a couple of times a month is because they are alternating several different pair.

While this might be true, forgive me for thinking that it sounds an awful lot like, "That's my story and I'm sticking with it."

Moving on.

For their part, men say they only wash their pajamas on a two-week timetable because they only wear them for a relatively short period of time.

While this rationale does sound a bit, well, stupid, it is important to understand that when it comes to laundry, men are dependent on certain signs — stains, food slobberings, odor — to indicate the time for hot water and detergent has arrived. So I think you can see the ongoing challenge here.

As far as I can determine, there are only two surefire ways to get men to comply with a weekly regimen of night wear laundering:

They can eschew PJs and sleep in their street clothes, which could also be a real time saver.

Or they can sleep without any clothes at all, which brings to mind the classic line from the movie "Apocalypse Now:"